Wrap-Up of the 2023 Color Coded Reading Challenge

Nine books were required to meet the Color Coded Challenge.  Each book had to have the follow colors in the book title or book cover: blue, red, yellow, green, brown, black, white, any other color and something that implies a color.

I met this challenge by reading and reviewing the following eleven books:

The Blue Bar by Damyanti  Bistros

The White Ship by Charles Spencer

A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch

Red Queen by Juan Gomez Jurado

Murder Under a Red Moon by Harini Nagendra

Black River by Matthew Spencer

The Infidel Stain by M. J. Carter

Blood Oranges by Jim Cannon

Key Lime Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See

Terror in Topaz by A. M. Stuart

The Yellow Rambutan Tree Mystery by Ovida Yu

Favorite Book:  Blood Oranges 

Second Favorite Book:  It's a tie! Red Queen and Murder Under a Red Moon.

Least Favorite Book:  Key Lime Pie Murder

The Yellow Rambutan Tree Mystery

The Yellow Rambutan Tree Mystery was published this past June.  It is author Ovidia Yu's 4th Su Lin Series novel but the first book of hers that I have read. I must say I was pleasantly surprised with the story. 

The publisher's summary:

The War may be over but Su Lin's troubles are returning - along with the British - to Singapore...

When two of Uncle Chen's associates come visiting Chen Mansion on the third day of Chinese New Year - an unlucky date in the Chinese calendar - Su Lin doesn't let them in. Not just because of the taboo, but because her uncle has been unwell. But the bad luck has clearly followed them as one of them is soon discovered outside the house, dead, with a strip of dried yellow rambutan peel in his mouth. And the other associate has gone missing.

Could this have anything to do with the recent British ban on opium consumption? Singapore is only just adjusting to the return of British rule and the authorities suspect the dead man was killed for threatening to expose the Chens for processing and distributing the drug. And as Su Lin adjusts to the return of Le Froy to Singapore, being Parshanti's bridesmaid and figuring out why scraps of yellow rambutan peel keep showing up around the mansion, she is forced to think about whether she has a future in the Chen family - and in the new, post-Second World War Singapore.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the Singaporean culture. I picked up most of it from the dialogue between the characters and there was alot of it. However, as a mystery novel the story fell short. There were large gaps in the investigation to make space for wedding preparations for Su Lin's girlfriend Parshanti as well as their interactions with other characters. I feel that the murder investigation should have never stopped once the body was found. The book shined more as historical fiction than as the historical mystery it is advertised to be. Perhaps something was lost in the translation.

The series' protagonist, twenty-six year old Su Lin, is a great character. She lives with her grandmother, uncle, aunt and niece. On the third day of the Chinese New Year, she finds that an old associate of her uncle is at the door. She refused admittance to the house because Lin's uncle was too ill to meet anyone.  The associate was subsequently murdered after leaving Su Lin's home.  In his pocket were some yellow rambutan skins. I thought these skins were an awesome clue.  Having never heard of them before, I headed to Wikipedia for more information.

I have mixed feelings about the book. The setting was exquisite but the murder investigation seemed secondary to the setting. I am rating it 3 out of 5 stars.

The Infadel Stain

I selected The Infadel Stain for the Color Coded Reading Challenge as something that denotes a color. When I spill food on my clothes it definitely changes its color so I thought this would fit the category. The book is a part of a new series by Miranda Carter. In this installment of the series, Blake and Avery investigate a serial killer who is stalking the streets of London.

The publisher's summary:  

London, 1841. Returned from their adventures in India, Jeremiah Blake and William Avery have both had their difficulties adapting to life in Victorian England. Moreover, time and distance have weakened the close bond between them, forged in the jungles of India. Then a shocking series of murders in the world of London’s gutter press forces them back together.

The police seem mysteriously unwilling to investigate, then connections emerge between the murdered men and the growing and unpredictable movement demanding the right to vote for all. In the back streets of Drury Lane, among criminals, whores, pornographers, and missionaries, Blake and Avery must race against time to find the culprit before he kills again.

But what if the murderer is being protected by some of the highest powers in the land?

I preferred the India setting in the first book to the wet and gray London we have in this book. India is exotic but London is rather dull. The investigation into the whodunnit seemed less interesting because the India setting gave me more options for villains and red herrings.  Moving the characters out of India was a mistake in my mind.

The setting change also affected Blake and Avery's relationship and their ability to resolve clues.  While they were in India, Avery needed Blake’s fluency in multiple languages and his extensive knowledge of the cultures. In London, Blake seems to have fewer investigative tools. 

This installment of the series was a miss for me and I will not be reading the series any further. 2 out of 5 stars.

Black River

I have never read any books written by Matthew Spencer and, in fact, never heard of him.  While I was searching for a book with the word "black" in the title for the Color Coded Reading Challenge I found Black River.  It is a serial killer story that takes place in Australia.  Black River is the first book in a duology and it is the author's debut novel.

During a stifling summer in Sydney, the body of a chaplain’s daughter is found wrapped in black plastic on the deserted grounds of an elite boarding school. Eager to find the so-called Blue Moon Killer before he strikes again, Detective Sergeant Rose Riley forms an uneasy alliance with Adam Bowman, a journalist with a valuable, and unsettling, link to the school’s history. As Riley’s investigation takes her deep into the secret lives of Sydney’s prominent citizens, Bowman delves into the darkest places of his own childhood for answers.

I did not care for this book at all. There were too much setting and character descriptions. Also, I did not understand the Australian slang. Riley was always taking panadol and after seeing the word 4 times I went to Wikipedia to find out what it was. It's Tylenol. The book is advertised as "dark, gritty, tense and atmospheric."  I see the dark part but not the tension. It was boring.

I am sad to have to give a low rating of 1 out of 5 stars. The author spent alot of time writing the story but it just didn't suit me.

Key Lime Pie Murder

August 1 is National Homemade Pie Day. It occurs every year. Since I am too lazy to bake, I have substituted reading the Key Lime Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke. It counts as a selection for the Calendar of Crime Challenge as an August holiday.

The publisher's summary:  

It promises to be a busy week for Hannah Swensen. Not only is she whipping up treats for the chamber of commerce booth at the Tri-County fair, she's also judging the baking contest; acting as a magician's assistant for her business partner's husband; trying to coax Moishe, her previously rapacious feline, to end his hunger strike, and performing her own private carnival act by juggling the demands of her mother and sisters.

With so much on her plate, it's no wonder Hannah finds herself on the midway only moments before the fair closes for the night. After hearing a suspicious thump, she goes snooping–only to discover Willa Sunquist, a student teacher and fellow bake contest judge, dead alongside an upended key lime pie. But who would want to kill Willa and why? 
 
Now Hannah needs to crank up the heat, hoping that Willa’s killer will get rattled and make a mistake. If that happens she intends to be there, even if it means getting on a carnival ride that could very well be her last…

The book is one of the older books in the series. Hannah isn't even married yet but thinks that the man she eventually marries is interested in her.  Key Lime Pie Murder did not seem to be a cozy mystery but rather just a cozy.  There was not much of a mystery here to be solved. No twists, no turns, no nothing. What the reader gets is the social life of the main character Hannah Swenson. I have a few of the later novels in the series and the plots were pretty thin also. I am sure there is a demographic for this type of a story. It just isn't me.

No rating.

Lady Tan's Circle of Women

The latest historical novel from Lisa See is inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China. The subject of See’s novel is Tan Yunxian, a real-life woman who lived in China during the Ming dynasty. She went on to become a “ming yi” — famous doctor — and published a compendium of 31 cases in the work “Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor.”  The story begins in the year 1469 when Tan Yunxian is 8 years old.

 The publisher's summary:  

According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.

But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, pluck instruments, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions, go on to treat women and girls from every level of society, and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? 

 

The characters are what make this novel such a great story.  I loved reading about the ups and downs of Yunxian and Meiling's friendship. They were on different life paths due to their socioeconomic levels but managed to maintain a lifelong affection. There were plenty of misunderstandings between them but most were due to the interference from Yunxian's mother in law and they always made up quickly. As all young adults have done throughout history, both girls fell into the social constructs of their time. Yunxian did not believe that she was superior to Meiling but acted as though she was. Yunxian was quite selfish because she always had whatever she wanted. She never asked Meiling how she was doing or how her family was handling their problems. Yunxian thought her life was more important. Meiling, on the other hand, had to worry about surviving and helping her ostracized mother. Meiling felt that she could not complain to Yunxian about how she treated her because Yunxian was from a higher class.  It sounds funny today but in 1400s China, making a social mistake can get you killed.

Their mothers and grandmothers were also great characters. Yunxian's mother dies when she is 8 and she is sent to live with her grandparents. This is where she meets Meiling and Meiling's mother, a midwife.  Yunxian's grandmother is a woman's doctor who begins to train her to follow in her footsteps. Meiling is also being trained to become a midwife like her mother.  It was natural for this foursome to be closely tied.

The men were not very interesting but this is a women's story. It's not just about female relationships but female medicine too. I can honestly say I felt each and every pain of the women in labor that Meiling treated. In those days a woman crouched down near the floor and pulled on a rope hanging from above to birth the babies. Ouch! 

Lady Tan's Circle of Women is a lovely book.  I highly recommend it.  5 out of 5 stars.

A Beautiful Blue Death

A Beautiful Blue Death is the first Charles Lenox Mystery.  Last year I read his The September Society and loved it. I decided to go back to the beginning of the series and read all of the books in order. 

The publisher's summary:

Charles Lenox, Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer, likes nothing more than to relax in his private study with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. But when his lifelong friend Lady Jane asks for his help, Lenox cannot resist the chance to unravel a mystery.

Prudence Smith, one of Jane's former servants, is dead of an apparent suicide. But Lenox suspects something far more sinister: murder, by a rare and deadly poison. The grand house where the girl worked is full of suspects, and though Prue had dabbled with the hearts of more than a few men, Lenox is baffled by the motive for the girl's death.

When another body turns up during the London season's most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle a web of loyalties and animosities. Was it jealousy that killed Prudence Smith? Or was it something else entirely? And can Lenox find the answer?

What can I say? This book was just as good as I expected. Poison was the method of murder. It was quickly identified as bella indigo, known as "the beautiful blue," but during the time period of the story, the Victorian Era, there wasn't much known about it. Another twist was that there was arsenic on the bottom of the bottle of bella indigo. Part of the mystery that was being unraveled was who had access to it, how was it used and what it really did to people exposed to it. The middle of the story was taken up with this howdunnit. The latter third concerned the whodunnit.  

I learned from the novel how the British police became known as bobbies. Robert Peel founded the police department on 1829. New officers used a variant of his first name when describing themselves.  Alot had changed regarding policing during the time period of the story. I enjoyed learning how procedures came into being. This was another fascinating part of the story. 

I think I enjoyed the howdunnit more than  the whodunit. It cannot be beat. I am rating this magnificent novel 5 out of 5 stars.

Red Queen

Red Queen was written by the author in 2018 in his native Spanish language. It was translated into English by Nick Caistor in 2023. Gomez-Jurado is one of my favorite authors. In Red Queen he has moved away from his usual religious thrillers to a political thriller. While I loved his religious thrillers and wish he would continue to write them, Red Queen was a fabulous read.

The publisher's summary:  

Antonia Scott―the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother―has a gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But after a personal trauma, she's refused to continue her work or even leave her apartment.

Jon Gutierrez, a police officer in Bilbao―disgraced, suspended, and about to face criminal charges―is offered a chance to salvage his career by a secretive organization that works in the shadows to direct criminal investigations of a highly sensitive nature. All he has to do is succeed where many others have failed: Convince a recalcitrant Antonia to come out of her self-imposed retirement, protecting her and helping her investigate a new, terrifying case.

The case is a macabre, ritualistic murder―a teen-aged boy from a wealthy family whose body was found without a drop of blood left in it. But the murder is just the start. A high-ranking executive and daughter of one of the richest men in Spain is kidnapped, a crime which is tied to the previous murder. Behind them both is a hidden mastermind with even more sinister plans. And the only person with a chance to see the connections, solve the crimes and successfully match wits with the killer before tragedy strikes again...is Antonia Scott.

Antonia Scott is a lovable investigator regardless of her personality quirks. She has been chosen to be Spain's red queen, a titled bestowed on one brilliant investigator in each European country. Antonia relies on pills that her Mentor gives her to help her filter outside stimuli so that she can focus on what she is seeing at a scene. The pills only work for an hour so she has to be selective about when she takes them. Red Queen is a crime fighting organization in Europe, similar to Interpol. Her sidekick Jon Gutierrez had been seriously wronged by a former employer and I couldn't help but root for him. This team of crime fighters work amazingly well together which is a good thing as Red Queen is the beginning of the Antonia Scott series. 

Despite Antonia and Jon's differences they quickly begin working on tracking down a criminal named Ezekiel who has slowly drained the blood from a man's carotid artery.  There was no blood at the scene nor was there any blood in the victim's body. Ezekiel then kidnaps Carla Ortiz, the daughter of the richest man in the world. I saw shades of Bill Gates here.  Ezekiel is an interesting character. He frequently tells himself "I am a good person." He also uses a line from Psalm 23 to add his signature to each crime scene:  annointing the dead person's head with oil.

The story had a super fast pace and was unputdownable. If you decide to read this book, make sure that you have time to finish it in one sitting. You won't be able to stop reading. It seemed that each chapter had a new twist to add to the story and this created alot of suspense. The short chapters also helped me keep reading because what's a few more pages before taking a break. Right?  

The Red Queen is a must read. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Blue Bar

The Blue Bar is the first book in Damyanti Biswas' Blue Mumbai Thriller duology. The second book, The Blue Black Hair, will be published in October 2023. Damyanti Biswas lives in Singapore and works for a charitable organization that promotes education and social enhancement in underprivileged communities. Her short stories have been published in magazines in the US, UK, and Asia, and her debut crime novel, You Beneath Your Skin, was published in November 2022. She writes psychological thrillers.

The publisher's summary:  

After years of dancing in Mumbai’s bars, Tara Mondal was desperate for a new start. So when a client offered her a life-changing payout to indulge a harmless, if odd, fantasy, she accepted. The setup was simple: wear a blue-sequined saree, enter a crowded railway station, and escape from view in less than three minutes. It was the last time anyone saw Tara.

Thirteen years later, Tara’s lover, Inspector Arnav Singh Rajput, is still grappling with her disappearance as he faces a horrifying new crisis: on the city’s outskirts, women’s dismembered bodies are being unearthed from shallow graves. Very little links the murders, except a scattering of blue sequins and a decade’s worth of missing persons reports that correspond with major festivals.

Past and present blur as Arnav realizes he’s on the trail of a serial killer and that someone wants his investigation buried at any cost. Could the key to finding Tara and solving these murders be hidden in one of his cold cases? Or will the next body they recover be hers?

The Blue Bar is a fantastic read. The Indian setting is one that I am always attracted to. I love reading about the saris and the food but cannot imagine having to deal with the noise. Likewise, the characters were interesting. Tara and Arnav's love story was charming. However, it didn't seem plausible that Arnav's current girlfriend Nandini would stick around knowing that he was still in love with Tara. Nandini is a professional woman and while she is presented as being independent, I thought she was a doormat. She tripped over her feet while trying to serve him.  

The story had a fast pace, owing to the intricate plot. When it became apparent that a serial killer was the perpetrator, I couldn't figure out who it was. The author gave us about 5 prospects for the villain and stumped me. I reread some of the pages hoping to determine the identity of the whodunit but didn't gain any additional insight. I am ambivalent about the ending (after the whodunit reveal) and would have preferred something else. Let's see how it plays out in the second book.

4 out of 5 stars.

The White Ship

I needed to find a book that had the color white in the title for the Color Coded Reading Challenge.  I found this history book by Charles Spencer that I thought would be good. However, I had a hard time becoming interested in it.

The publisher's summary:

The sinking of the White Ship in 1120 is one of the greatest disasters England has ever suffered. In one catastrophic night, the king’s heir and the flower of Anglo-Norman society were drowned and the future of the crown was thrown violently off course.

In a riveting narrative, Charles Spencer follows the story from the Norman Conquest through to the decades that would become known as the Anarchy: a civil war of untold violence that saw families turn in on each other with English and Norman barons, rebellious Welsh princes and the Scottish king all playing a part in a desperate game of thrones. All because of the loss of one vessel – the White Ship – the medieval Titanic.

One review of the book states that it is just as gripping as a thriller. I beg to differ. The writing style is scholarly and while it tells a part of English history most of us are unfamiliar with, it was rather dull. The most excited I got was when I ran across a name of a direct ancestor here and there. I was expecting the book to be about a ship that sank at sea and wondered whether there would be some mystery concerning the sinking. The ship didn't sink until the halfway point in the story. 

The White Ship is a history book with a small section about a shipwreck. 2 out of 5 stars.

2023 Color Coded Reading Challenge

I have found many interesting books and new authors from participating in this challenge over the years. I am excited to participate again. Once again the categories will be more open--the color may either be named in the title or it may appear as the dominant color for the cover of the book. For "implies color" the image implying color should dominate the cover--for instance a large rainbow, a field of flowers, or the image of a painter. 

General Rules:

The Challenge runs from January 1 through December 31, 2023 and any book read after January 1 may count regardless of when you sign up. You may sign-up any time and crossovers with other challenges are fine. If you post on Facebook, Instagram, or other social media to log a book, please use #ColorCoded2023.

The challenge is to read nine books in the following categories:

1. A book with "Blue" or any shade of Blue in the title/on the cover.

2. A book with "Red" or any shade of Red in the title/on the cover.

3. A book with "Yellow" or any shade of Yellow in the title/on the cover.

4. A book with "Green" or any shade of Green in the title/on the cover.

5. A book with "Brown" or any shade of Brown in the title/on the cover.  This color is my hardest to find.

6. A book with "Black" or any shade of Black in the title/on the cover.

7. A book with "White" or any shade of White in the title/on the cover.

8. A book with any other color in the title/on the cover (Purple, Orange, Silver, Pink, etc).

9. A book with a word/image that implies color in the title/on the cover (Rainbow, Polka-dot, Plaid, Shadow, Paint, Ink, etc).

In order to sign up for the challenge you need to fill out a form on the My Reader's Block site.  If you have a blog, please post about the challenge on your site and enter the url link. You may also enter a link to a Goodreads or Library Thing list, Instagram, etc. 

This is a fun challenge. Won't you join me in participating?